pyehouse

Techcrunch reports that Adobe has changed their Flash Media Server to stream Flash based content to iOS devices by essentially removing the content from a Flash container and reformatting it on the fly to something palatable on iOS. Two quick comments.

First, the opening quote from Techcrunch:

Ardent iOS supporters have been clamoring for true Flash support for years

I would respectfully disagree with. Ardent iOS supporters probably haven’t missed Flash support much, and even less so over time.

Second, this marks a potentially significant departure for Adobe from their stance of pushing their format across all platforms as the end-all be-all. This combined with their announcement of Adobe Edge, their tool to create content using HTML5, JavaScript and CSS instead of Flash, are indicators that Adobe seems to be pushing away from Flash and trying to stay on the lead of creating the tools developers will use going forward. I don’t see this as a bad thing, frankly.

Recently, the Flurry Blog released a report indicating the sharp rise, both actual and anticipated, in spending on mobile ads. Of particular note, they pointed out, was the potential for mobile ad spending to dwarf other internet ad spending within the next year. As spending increases on mobile advertising we will see a concurrent increase in spending on the technologies needed to deliver that advertising in the mobile space. For any serious contender for mobile ad development, HTML5, not Flash, is the only reasonable path forward.

Flash is ubiquitous. It is used for a number of tasks on websites, from printer control, to copying text to the clipboard. It is also commonly used for the Flash based games you run across all over the net. And it is, of course, used for advertising. Flash provides a simple method of packaging animated multimedia content that can be seen by most viewers, and can be used to alter the viewer’s experience enough to grab their attention and force them to view your ad, characteristics which advertisers naturally find desirable. While the Adobe Flash Player has been the source of many security holes and is reported by Apple to be a leading cause of crashes of their Safari browser, the experience has been “good enough” that most users end up installing it if it isn’t already on their system. That’s the desktop experience.

The mobile experience is quite different. First, iOS, one of the most popular mobile platforms today, does not currently support Flash and likely never will. There has been plenty of push and pull between Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen and former Apple CEO Steve Jobs concerning Flash’s performance on mobile and that may have had something to do with the decision not to include it on iOS. If it wasn’t the only reason it was certainly sufficient given the performance of Flash on the only other mobile platform currently poised to compete significantly with iOS… Android. To date, the Flash experience on Android has been, by most accounts, tolerable at best. In most cases, playback puts a serious strain on any mobile hardware that has the software capable of playing Flash content, such that any such content is essentially unusable. That’s not something likely to be a major selling point for advertisers looking to take advantage of the mobile space.

iOS has a significant enough amount of the mobile market that no advertiser would dare consider giving up advertising on the platform. Even if they were willing to give up such a huge market, using Flash on Android is hardly going to be a positive experience either. As a result, the push for advertisers is going to be toward HTML5, not toward Flash. And as developers are tapped for increasing numbers of advertising engagements, they are going to be required to perform at least some of that engaging without using Flash. Speaking from experience, programmers like consistency in their environment. Reuse is more easily achievable when you’re sticking to one development platform. Since Flash is out of the picture for at least part of these campaigns, you can look forward to a subsequent decrease in Flash usage in the desktop space, something I imagine many of us will be happy with.

From Techcrunch:

When asked about how an advertiser should view Twitter’s liberal pseudonym policy versus that of Google+ and Facebook, both of which require users to sign up with their real names, Costolo said that the primary difference between how the companies make money is that is that brands like Virgin America pay Twitter when someone, whether it be @bozo123 (his example) or @johnsmith clicks on a link. “We’re not wedded to pseudonyms. Other services are declaring that you have to use your real name, because it will help them monetize. We want to serve our users first.”

Just remember, the advertisers are the users. You are the product.

So it seems Eric Schmidt, chairman of Google, accidentally gave notice that Android 4.0, the next release of the search giant’s mobile OS, will be released in the October/November timeframe. Of course, that may change but regardless it appears to be coming soon. Whether it comes soon or not, without major uptake by a lot of handset vendors and service providers, it’s simply going to add to the growing pileup of currently deployed Android revisions, increasing the fragmentation even more.

Android 4.0, code named Ice Cream Sandwich, is intended to, among other things, refine the APIs with an effort to reduce fragmentation. Android 2.0 (Eclair) was released in October 2009, 2.2 (Froyo) was released in May 2010, while 2.3 (Gingerbread) came out in December 2010. 3.0, aka Honeycomb, was a tablet only version first released in February 2011. 2.2 (Froyo) is currently deployed on roughly 50% of Android devices with 2.3 (Gingerbread) installed on another 30% or so. Honeycomb, the tablet version, is only deployed to about 1.5% of Android devices, a fact which leads to its own conclusions, but that’s for another time. The fact is, the APIs were originally supposed to be forward compatible. Something written to target an older revision of the OS should work on newer revisions, until a major release comes along which might break API compatibility. The API, therefore, is intended to provide shelter to developers hoping to deploy against the largest possible number of devices. The problem, though, isn’t developer application support for various OS’s. The problem is the hardware.

The handsets are targeted at a given revision of the OS and a lot of time and money is put into making sure the handset works as intended with that version of the OS. Even between minor releases, as evidenced by the already existing fragmentation, it has been difficult to get the various parties involved to consider revisiting existing handsets, some of which might not even be marketed any longer and therefore unlikely to provide further revenue through additional sales, in order to incorporate a new Android revision.

Android 4.0 is supposed to address this, allowing one OS to target both handsets as well as tablets. That’s great, but realistically is not going to reduce fragmentation very quickly. To begin with, Android tablet sales have been something just shy of anemic but even then it is doubtful that without some potent new features unlocked with 4.0 any Android tablet manufacturer will want to revise the OS on tablets currently in the sales channel, much less those no longer being sold. As for handset developers, they’re in a worse boat since many deployed devices are much older than any tablet currently out there. And it’s not like current handsets will suddenly drop dead of electronic heart attacks now that 4.0 is available. They will continue to perform as they always have. So Android 4.0 is really only expected to solve fragmentation moving forward.

And yet, even with the release of 4.0 imminent, major manufacturers who must have had access to beta versions of Ice Cream Sandwich, have still elected to roll their own with forked older versions of Android (vis-a-vis the upcoming Kindle). Sure, eventually Android 4.0 will become the mainstream version rolled out on new devices. But by then Google might have already been working on Android 5.0, aka Monster Truck Rally (who knows?). Meanwhile, the Android ecosystem will be falling to pieces.

Ordinarily, I reserve my blog for tech related content, but I just got this from KISD and wanted to share for those who may have kids in the district but don’t receive these messages.

Updated @ 12pm:

This morning, the concentration of smoke from wildfires to our north has significantly increased and is not expected to subside during the day. Therefore, the district is taking the following steps to maintain the health and wellbeing of students and staff:

There will be no outdoor PE or recess activities for the remainder of the day.
There will be no outdoor athletic or fine arts practices. Athletic and fine arts after school practices will be held indoors if possible. Students should check with their coaches/sponsors for exact details as to the status/location of their practice.
Campuses will work to load students on buses quickly to minimize time outdoors.
District officials will continue to monitor the situation closely for possible impact on operations for Friday. By noon Friday, district officials will make an announcement as to what, if any impact, the air quality may have on Friday night athletic events.

Please continue to monitor the Katy ISD website for more information about this situation as it becomes available.

Original:

The Katy ISD Office of Emergency Management has been monitoring the situation regarding the wildfires north of our area. These fires, located in the Montgomery, Grimes and Waller County area continue to burn and produce smoke that continues to cover the Katy area.

This morning, the concentration of smoke in our area has significantly increased. Therefore, the district is limiting outdoor activity for all students until noon. In addition, we are closing the outside air intakes on our HVAC systems to help maintain the air quality in the buildings. District officials will continue to monitor the situation and will make a decision later this morning as to whether or not to restrict after school outdoor activities, such as athletic and band practices.

Teachers and school nurses will continue to monitor those students who are asthmatic and those with other respiratory conditions. According to the Texas Department of State Health Services, “Common symptoms of smoke exposure include coughing, scratchy throat, irritated sinuses, shortness of breath, chest pain, headaches, stinging eyes and runny nose.” If a teacher sees a student with an increase in these symptoms, the student will be directed to the school nurse.

Please continue to monitor the Katy ISD website for more information about this situation as it becomes available.

I have to say that a Motorola Facebook phone (as reported by Techcrunch) was not something I expected to see. Given Google’s recent purchase of Motorola Mobility and their launch of Google+ as competitor to Facebook, as well as the ongoing battle for ad revenue and I don’t see a bright future for this device. Given the development cycle of these sorts of devices, it was likely in the pipeline well before Google’s purchase which explains why it’s even seeing what little light of day it is getting at this point. But I foresee a minimal effort to push these devices assuming they remain as currently designed.

Now making the rounds are comments surrounding the internal Google documents revealed in the Oracle v Google case. The bits that seem to have everyone’s interest aroused concern two things. The pertinent bullet points from the discovered document are as follows:

• Do not develop in the open. Instead, make source code available after innovation is complete
• Lead device concept: Give early access to the software to partners who build and distribute devices to our specification (ie, Motorola and Verizon). They get a non-contractual time to market advantage and in return they align to our standard.

A lot of time and attention is being given to these statements, making Google out to be hypocritical or as having less than savory business practices. The fact is that there is absolutely nothing wrong with either of these practices.

The first bullet point, concerning not developing in the open, is innocuous. There’s nothing evil going on here. There’s nothing about open source or openness in general that requires your code repository be visible 24×7 for all the world to see. If you want to stay in the coding cave and do your development (or innovate as Google puts it), only releasing the fruits of your labor when they are ripe and bursting with innovative goodness, that is your prerogative. I suspect it’s the word choice that has folks up in arms here but conceptually this is the same thing as the guy working on a new device driver to tack onto the Linux kernel, not releasing it until it’s feature complete. Really, it’s just not a big deal.

The second bullet point, concerning early access to partners who abide by Google’s standards, is a bit more interesting, but nonetheless does not rise to the level of being ‘wrong’. Perhaps a bit embarrassing and maybe even damaging now that it’s out in the open, but not wrong. If Google is developing a codebase and wants partners to adhere to their standards as a precondition of early access, isn’t that their right? Is there anything indicating they absolutely must provide access to everyone, equally? Most open source licenses simply indicate what is involved in the relationship between the developer and the recipient of the code. It has nothing to do with any other relationships. Should Google have done this? Probably not from where they’re sitting now, but at the time it was a calculated risk. Were they able to offer something in exchange for partners abiding by the vision Google had for the Android platform? What were the chances of it becoming public knowledge? How damaging would it be? Unfortunately for Google they may be about to find out. For my part? *meh*

HP has announced a ‘private Cloud beta’ to introduce developers to their new HP Cloud Services. This is broken into two actual named services, HP Cloud Compute and HP Cloud Object Storage. This breaks the cloud functionality up into the two traditional bits of cloud computing: putting stuff in the cloud (storage) and doing stuff in the cloud (computing). I just wonder if it’s the right move, at the right time, done right.

With this announcement, HP is further declaring their shift to software services under CEO Apotheker. Moreover, these services are targeted squarely at developers and companies to build upon and deliver their own products with HP as the underpinning, again a shift away from HP as the provider of an end product for consumers. This isn’t a bad thing, but it presents a problem: product differentiation. There are already cloud storage solutions available, Amazon S3 for example, though Google Storage is in Lab state and other competitors are around though perhaps not as well known. Why is HP entering what looks to be a pretty crowded field? If they have a long term plan, given the turmoil they’ve been suffering through, wouldn’t it be a good idea to be as transparent as possible right about now?

If HP Cloud Object Storage and HP Cloud Compute are meant to integrate tightly, it makes a certain amount of sense. If you truly have a need for heavy computing, it’s reasonable to levy HP’s servers to get the job done perhaps at a fraction of the cost it would take to buy the hardware yourself. And their storage is right there waiting for you to use too. But one gets the impression that Object Storage is intended to be leveraged as a separate entity altogether. And as evidenced by yesterday’s vanishing act with Google Docs, albeit temporary, the further your data is away from you, the more easily it can become out of reach when you need it the most.

Still, kudos to HP for announcing something they are actually going to offer. It must be nice not to have to constantly remind folks about the products they are killing off.

I’ve written before, elsewhere, about cloud computing as the latest trend (though that’s not to say it’s new, just that it is trending.. again). At the time I laid out pros and cons from the point of view of putting the entire computing experience into the cloud. But of course, that’s only one way to do it. Currently there are two major companies who are pushing their own views of how cloud computing should be done, Google and Apple. And Google just stumbled.

Google suffered an outage today with their Google Docs service. Google Docs, if you are not familiar with it, allows one to import, create, edit and share documents using only your Google account and a modern browser. These documents are Office-like, with the ability to import Word, Excel and Powerpoint documents as well as to create native Google Docs documents too. All of the storage is tucked away on Google’s servers. All you need to be able to do is launch a browser and direct it to Google and you’re good to go. Equally convenient is the ability to share these documents with other Google users making them immediately available for viewing or even editing, including collaborative editing should you so choose. That is, convenient until it stops working.

Apple on the other hand is nearing the release of the much anticipated iCloud service, enabling the cross-device sharing of documents and settings between thick client apps on a per user basis. As information is altered, it is marked for synchronization. Presumably if the service is unavailable, the synchronization step is simply delayed until the service is available once more. This could be because the network connectivity has dropped or because Apple’s servers are dead. It doesn’t really matter. The cloud connection becomes a mere background task while for the end user life goes on as usual. And that’s the way cloud computing should be.

Google’s entire platform is centered around it’s own services run on its own servers. Apple is about their hardware. The services are an aside, or perhaps a funnel, showing potential buyers the extra goodies they get by joining the Apple camp. As a result, Apple doesn’t need to create a web enabled version of iWorks or iLife that works in a browser. They don’t want to. They want apps that run on your iron, in your own home or office. Namely, the iron you bought in the form of your MacBook or iMac or Mac Pro. Google, on the other hand, is platform agnostic. You could be using a Dell, an Asus, an HP (well, for a little while longer anyway). It only matters that you are using their services.

I should correct myself. Google does actually have hardware for sale… the Chromebook. Running their OS, targeted at their services and software. So in fact, insofar as Google is playing in the hardware space, they are actual working the exact reverse route as Apple, using hardware to sell their services. As their flagship hardware product, I don’t expect them to drop it, but I also don’t expect it to take off. Especially with the possibility that one little network outage could leave you unable to work with any of your documents.

Which brings us back to today’s outage. Google hasn’t misstepped very often, but they’ve double down on software as a service and full commitment to cloud computing, pushing everything off of the user’s PC and into the cloud. As a result, if they lose this bet, it’s going to hurt very badly. And that doesn’t even mention Microsoft’s burgeoning efforts in this space. Google is taking their stand in the cloud but if they’re not careful, they’ll find themselves taking a big fall.

Yahoo is hurting. It’s been hurting for some time now. It’s growth has been stunted, in fact seeing ad revenue shrink, particularly in the face of fierce competition from Google and subsequently Facebook. According to the Wall Street Journal, an insider source reports the company is willing to consider selling to the right bidder. Taken with the rest of the financial news about the company’s woes, it signals a pretty sharp descent from what were once lofty heights. What went wrong?

It is easy to say “Google and Facebook” and leave it at that, but that leaves a lot unsaid. Google, for instance, nominally offered precisely what Yahoo was offering. As has been stated repeatedly of late, the real client of Google (as well as Yahoo) is advertisers. Their real product for sale is the attention of the users of their various services. But in order to create that product, they still have to provide something attractive for those visitors. In other words, a better experience. That is where Yahoo failed against Google. Whether Google has strayed from it’s “Don’t Be Evil” mantra, it started by focusing on providing quality search results for those using their search engine. The algorithm has been tinkered with and improved over time, but even from the start, users were treated to a very simple and very effective interface. One text field, one button. This was in contradiction to Yahoo’s interface which enticed you to drill down through their heirarchy of categories. Of course Yahoo also had a search field, but on top of the relative clutter of their home page, they had yet to really provide a similarly effective search experience. As a result, the core reason people visited either site was better served by going to Google rather than to Yahoo. Yahoo began providing peripheral services to their users before Google did, like Yahoo Mail, still one of the most widely used web-based email services. But monetizing those services was still problematic.

So what of Facebook? Where Google stepped in and did Yahoo’s services but better, Facebook offered a completely different service but one that ultimately competed for the same advertisers. Yahoo has had social services and had them in place well before Facebook. But again, they weren’t capitalized on and thus lost ground. Moreover, services like Yahoo Groups, Yahoo Personals and Yahoo 360 were all too disparate and never provided a single cohesive experience for the end user. Facebook provided all of the social aspects in one location and has continued to add to them. More importantly, Facebook provided third party developers the opportunity to tap into their ecosystem and make money. This not only increased direct revenue to Facebook, it also allowed additional compelling content to come into Facebook for visitors without Facebook having to lift a finger to create it. Yahoo, in contrast, focused primarily on user created content and again didn’t seem to effectively make what services they did have into revenue centers.

What Yahoo lacked was a focused vision of not only where to go but how to get there. It seems like any time a new feature was to be added, it would be bolted on rather than integrated. And with the revolving door policy that is developing in their top spot and now the leadership-by-committee approach that also looks to be developing, Yahoo doesn’t look to be breaking out of their slump anytime soon. Still, they are big. They do get traffic. They may not be top dog, but they aren’t to be ignored. If the right person is brought in with the right mandate, a lot could be done to turn the company’s fortunes around.

I’m just not holding my breath.